On February 25, the Senate Education and Health subcommittee on Health Professions will hear and vote on two bills that seek to protect unborn children.
House Bill (HB) 212 restores an earlier requirement that abortionists obtain a woman’s fully informed written consent, including providing her with important written materials about the status of her unborn child and the abortion procedure terminates the pregnancy, prior to the performance of an abortion.
With “follow the science” now an ingrained national mantra, this is a step to ensure the woman in question is fully informed so she can make an educated decision, based on the latest science of how life develops in the womb. This provision had earlier been a Virginia law before the pro-abortion Democrats became the majority in the General Assembly and killed that pro-life legislation in 2020.
(In retrospect, some observers of Virginia politics now marvel how, in the early months of 2020 when attention should have been focused on the descending Covid pandemic and emergent health crises which were already sweeping the globe, some politicians in Richmond were instead busy dismantling pro-life legislation. Here in the Roanoke Valley, Sen. John Edwards (D) and Del. Salam “Sam” Rasoul (D) voted against those earlier pro-life protections.)
HB 304 would require every licensed physician who attempts to terminate a pregnancy to (i) do everything medically to preserve the life and health of a baby who has been born alive following a failed abortion as would be given to any other child born alive and (ii) transfer the baby who has been born alive to a hospital for further medical care.
Many observers are shocked to learn that, in Virginia currently or any civilized land that honors human rights, a baby who survives a botched abortion currently has no legal protections. HB 304 seeks to correct that.
–Scott Dreyer
